


Nameless: A Tale of Lann the Clever

by tywinning



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, House Lannister, Lannister, Origin Story, Preseries, The Age of Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/pseuds/tywinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The histories would get it wrong, like histories always do, taking from the conquered and giving to the conqueror.  Even the one without an army.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nameless: A Tale of Lann the Clever

In a time men would call the Age of Heroes ( _there are no heroes_ ), when barbarians from Andalos arrived with armies, and when the First Men went to war, a woman of House Casterly ruled the western hills.  

The Queen of the Rock did not fear the men who painted seven-pointed stars on their chests and made kingdoms fall one by one.  She worshiped in a godswood of stone, where no weirwood could ever be cut down.  She paid gold from her mines for whispers of the sudden conquest of the Reach and the bitter resistance of the Kings of Winter.  She put her faith in the high mountains that shielded her from all of the invaders' armies.  

Rock was her kingdom.  Rock was her god.  Rock was her strength.  Rock was her soul and her blood and her bone ( _and this would be the legacy she would pass to all her daughters_ ).  Above all, rock was eternal.  The Queen felt safe. 

The men of the kingdom called the Queen beautiful, though in truth her face was hard and angular.  Men said in the night she roared as loudly as the lions that roamed the plains.  Some of the more naive ones said she actually transformed into a lioness and fought with the wild beasts; the scratches on her neck and shoulders in the morning proved it, they whispered.  

Every clear morning, she stood atop her rock fortress basking in the sunrise.  Whenever a shadow crossed the sun at noon, men would say she had stolen more gold for her hair.  ( _The histories would get it wrong, like histories always do, taking from the conquered and giving to the conqueror.  Even the one without an army._ )  

The Queen cared little what men said, and she cared for men not at all.  For this reason, she found herself unwed and without an heir in her twenty-fifth year.  Her adviser insisted that something must be done, despite the Queen's protests.  

Around this time, a man arrived in the small fishing village at the base of the Queen's fortress.  ( _Sometimes a single man can pass when an army cannot._ )  He was taller than most, and his accent was off, but that was only to be expected from someone from the lands beyond the mountains.  The man called himself Lann  ** ~~XXXX~~**.  ( _The conquered can take something too, on occasion._ )

Lann asked the village folk when winter would end.  "Whenever spring begins," they answered wryly.  The fishermen asked the traveler his trade.  "Adventure," Lann responded with an easy smile that revealed a gold front tooth.  

Listening to the villagers talk, he learned that the Queen was looking for a husband.  The men laughed at him when he announced he would be the one to wed her.  

"Many have tried, fool.  She asks a question and swears to marry whoever has the answer, but no one knows it.  She does it just to appease her pretty little adviser."  They laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.  "No, that one will die childless.  Her Grace's good to us, so we just accept it and turn a blind eye."  

Lann paid the villagers no mind.  He presented himself at the castle the next morning.

"Your name?" asked the Queen's adviser wearily.  

"Lann  ** ~~XXXX~~**."  

The Queen's adviser took her quill and promptly added it to the long list of failures. 

The Queen rose from her throne and circled the man who had come before her, like a predator circling her prey.  "Give me the correct answer to my question, and I will give you my hand in marriage, and make you my king.  You may not ask anyone else for the answer, or you will die.  If you answer wrong, you will die, like every other man before you.  Do you agree?"  Lann nodded, and the Queen's adviser sighed heavily.  

The Queen returned to her throne, smiling, and covered her adviser's hand with her own.  She spoke her riddle.  

"I am sometimes seen, but mostly not.  In the right hands, I am more dangerous than any woman, and stronger than any man.  Men eat me, though they would soon starve to death on a diet consisting solely of me.  I cut both ways, and I cure too.  I am the undoing of kings and the lifeblood of lovers.  What am I?"

Lann spread his hands and begged the Queen for three days to think of an answer.  The Queen saw no harm in it, so long as he remained in her castle, under her eyes.   She took her adviser by the arm and left the man there with his thoughts.  

Lann thought and thought for a whole day.  He was not clever like her.  ( _Oh, the histories would take that from her too.  They would take that first._ )  For an entire night, he stole out of his room and paced the stone-carved halls while the Queen loudly took her pleasure.  He slept the second day away in exhaustion.  

The second night, Lann was awake.  Still, he could think of no answer.  He roamed the halls once more.  Outside of the Queen's door, he bent to listen at her keyhole.  Lann was not clever, but he was treacherous.  He watched the Queen and her adviser in their naked splendor, and waited for the two women to talk.  He was not disappointed.

"Why must you persist in this riddle game of yours?" her adviser asked irritably.  "Just chose one and be done."

"But how could I choose?"  The queen stretched languorously.  "All men are the same, and none of them are you."

"But why the riddle?  It in particular vexes me."

The Queen gasped and smiled in delight.  "You don't know the answer," she exclaimed.  "You, who has every answer!"

Her adviser remained stonily silent.  

"Can you really not guess, love," the Queen gloated.  "You who are always by my side, writing down everything I say?  You who are always whispering in my ear?"  She began to trail kisses down her lover's body.  "It is what."  Kiss.  "I value you for."  Kiss.  "The most."  

On her knees, the Queen spoke her doom.  

Lann returned to his room, where he slept as peacefully as a babe.  The next morning, he stood before the Queen and gave her the answer.

"Words."  He smiled wickedly.  "They are the undoing of queens as well as kings, Your Grace."  

Lann took her for his unwilling wife and banished her adviser, and thus the Kingdom of the Rock fell, not to armies, but to treachery and a trick.  

The Queen took her revenge, though.  She bore Lann no sons.  Only three daughters, to remind her forever of the three days the Queen mistakenly let Lann live.  ( _A Casterly lioness does not forgive._ )  The three girls grew into women with gold in their hair and green fire in their eyes.  They were three lionesses without mercy who refused to carry on their father's name.  They refused even to speak it or write it, and they scratched out every letter of it they found.  

As one of Lann's last sons would come to say, " _It's the family name that lives on.  That's all that lives on._ "  The name of Lann's family was obliterated.  Men today may claim descent from the legendary trickster only through the female line.  

Yet the name Casterly lives still.  

Rock is eternal.  

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on [tumblr](http://tywinning.tumblr.com/post/29648610706/the-histories-would-get-it-wrong-like-histories)
> 
> From the books, we know that Lann the Clever was a legendary trickster from the Age of Heroes, who swindled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock using only his wits. The singers say that he stole gold from the sun for his hair. House Lannister is descended from Lann through the female line.
> 
> Comments are lovely!


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